A little exercise

BOX SCORE
Element	Current	Std. Range	Trend
Hemoglobin	7.5	13-17	^
Platelets	20	140-375	^
ANC	1210	1800-8300	v

I would like for you to do a little exercise with me. The first step is get a piece of paper and a pencil. If you are cock sure of yourself, a pen will do. If you don't write notes on paper anymore, use the Notes App on your phone. OK, are you ready? 

Step two) Write down all the things that you need to do to your home in the next four months. 

Step three) Write down all the things you need to do for yourself in the next four months. 

Step four) Write down all the things you will need to take with you, when you move to another city for four months. 

Step five) Ready, set, Go! 

We've been trying to do the above steps for several weeks now. I threw in on my list to renew my driver's license, which is due to expire during our vacation on Marquam Hill. I learned a couple of things in my pursuit of a license renewal. You can do it online! Just go to the Oregon DMV website, fill in page after page of information designed to protect your identity. Then hit "submit." That's it...unless you are over 65 years old, in which case you receive a little notice that says: "If you are over 65 years of age, you must go to a DMV office in person and complete a vision test and have your picture taken." Hmmm. I wonder how hard it would be for DMV to have placed that disclaimer at the beginning of the application process? 

The next thing I learned is that you really should get a Real ID driver's license, if you intend to take a trip on an airplane. That requires all the same stuff as a regular driver's license PLUS a passport and a minimum of two documents that verify your residence address...you know like an electric bill or a bank statement that is mailed to you. I never thought of that when I gradually changed the majority of our accounts to "paperless." I finally dredged up a bill from our homeowners' insurance, and my Social Security statement of benefits. So, you might want to save a couple of accounts that still send paper billings through the snail mail.

We are making good progress, but among all of the pre-transplant medical tests and several transfusion appointments, it is hard to juggle everything. Of course, the Lord has done His usual, amazing job of choreography, and with the help of two medical teams who seem to be totally focused on making things happen, we are gradually checking off items on the lists. Soon we will be down to things that must be done on the day we leave the house, like turning off/unplugging small appliances; making sure the refrigerator is free of food that might spoil; locking doors and so on.

We realized, yesterday, that moving Jill to our vacation rental and me to the hospital on the same day may be problematic. A complicating factor is that OHSU can't give us a check-in time yet. It all depends on when a bed is ready during the admission date. Jill wrote to the owner of the rental to see if we could check in the day before my admission. He replied that the unit is rented until the morning of our original (and current) check in date. He said if things changed, he would notify Tina, the social worker who is charged with arranging housing for transplant patients. One option, of course, is to stay in a hotel. The main concern for me in that scenario would be someone breaking into out car and removing the stuff that would appear on the list for step 4 above. Did I mention that the new Portland feels to me like a different city, much more threatening, than the Portland in which I grew up?

And so, we are once again finding that the only way we can proceed, without making ourselves crazy, is one day at a time. God has provided everything  we need every step of the way. One of the best things He has provided this week is increasing blood counts, obviating the necessity for transfusions. Now that's a time saver. What was it I wrote in my last post? Trust and obey? Yeah that one. 

OK, Lord, we're going to keep on trusting and obeying. It's all in Your hands. 

 “As for me, I would seek God,
    and to God would I commit my cause,
⁹ who does great things and unsearchable,
    marvelous things without number:" (Job 5:8-9)